


One Single Yesterday

by cassandraoftroy



Series: Only Time [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Doctor Who (2005), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Adventures in the TARDIS, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Female Protagonist, Fix-It, Major Character Injury, POV Female Character, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-28
Updated: 2013-08-28
Packaged: 2017-12-24 22:03:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/945158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cassandraoftroy/pseuds/cassandraoftroy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Presented with an opportunity to travel anywhere in space and time with the Doctor, Steve returns to the 1940s to make his date with Peggy. Their fates may lie in different centuries, but Peggy and Steve are determined to make the most of the opportunity they have been given to be with one another again, for however long their time-traveling adventure may last.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One Single Yesterday

_A week next Saturday._ It was on the long flight back from the Alps to headquarters that she first asked herself why she had picked a date so far away. She came back to that question again and again over the course of the intervening ten days. Not because she expected anything to _happen_ that evening – she had known even as she'd said the words that they were nothing more than a fantasy meant to comfort both Steve and herself, the only aid that was within her power to offer him as he plunged the aircraft into its final dive – but because it created a loose end, like a dangling yarn tail on a poorly-knit jumper. The more she toyed with it, as she inevitably did when trying to fill out mission reports, or pushing rations aimlessly around on her plate, or staring up at the tent ceiling in the middle of the night, the worse the damage grew. Her rational mind knew that she had lost Steve Rogers the moment his radio cut out, but her gut wouldn't accept the loss until that Saturday, at eight o'clock on the dot, when he failed to meet her.

She knew she was being foolish. Not just for clinging to the illusion that Steve wasn't gone yet, that existed in some sort of impossible 'quantum state' or whatever it was Howard used to natter on about in his workshop, though that certainly was foolish of her. The truly absurd thing was her fixation itself. She had lost friends to the war prior to this; good men and women, good soldiers. She mourned them, missed them, regretted their loss. Steve shouldn't have been any different. She'd known him for only a year, and six months of that time hardly counted; after Project Rebirth was completed, they hadn't seen each other until his USO show had come to Italy. _Enough time to care for a friend,_ she told herself as she took the rollers carefully out of her hair, arranging the dark curls just so. _Enough time to respect a comrade-in-arms,_ she thought as she applied her lipstick with a hand that miraculously didn't tremble. _Not nearly enough time to fall in love._

A year from now, Captain Rogers would be a bittersweet memory. She would smile and call him the best man she'd ever known – when she spoke of him, which would happen rarely. Thinking of him wouldn't cause any terrible, hollow ache behind her breastbone.

But for now, the only thing to do was to slip on her heels and go downstairs to the cab that would carry her to the Stork Club, to meet a man who could never arrive. It was the only way to force herself to believe that he was gone.

As she had expected, the club was noisy, full of movement and music and laughter, the sounds of people living lives that were, for just a few hours, perfect. The clock above the bar told her it was five minutes to eight. She stared down into her glass of red wine before taking a small sip. She was permitting herself only two drinks tonight, fully aware that she wasn't in a good frame of mind for liquor, and she'd wanted something that would last a little while, if only so the waitress wouldn't bother her to order something else. She needed time alone with her memories.

Normally, she never sat with her back to a door; her training with British Intelligence had instilled in her a reflex to keep an eye on all entrances to a room. It was a reflex she deliberately ignored tonight, knowing that her gaze would continually be drawn to the doorway with the pitiful expectation of the impossible. There was a doorman, and any sounds of trouble would disrupt the rhythm of the room enough to draw her attention. She slumped a little in her seat, listening as the band began to play something slow, and ignored the way her wine glass was fading into a watery blur.

She sensed, more than saw, a figure approaching on her right. She glanced at the interloper without raising her eyes, and saw the swimming colors of an Army dress uniform. _Just what I need,_ she thought bleakly, _some G.I. on a weekend pass in the big city, looking to make time with a girl._ It had probably been a mistake to wear the red dress – black was more appropriate for mourning, anyway – but some twist of sentiment had impelled her to choose the dress that Steve had seen her in. She drew in a breath, preparing to tell the young soldier that she wasn't interested in company tonight.

"Eight o'clock, on the dot." The impossibly familiar voice made her heart clench. Her head shot up, and a face she never dreamed of seeing again came into focus as she blinked away tears. "I hope I'm not late?"

She didn't remember standing, but her arms were flung around his neck and her face buried in his shoulder. She was probably smudging lipstick all over his lapel. "You're right on time," she sighed against his throat. A torrent of relief rushed through her, like a river at spring flood – until she hit a rock. _This can't be happening._ She pulled back from him far enough to look up into his face, though her hands still rested on his nape. "How...? You went down in the Arctic. How can you be here?"

He felt so warm, so solid, so _real._ The smile he aimed at her made something inside her melt. "I'll tell you, but it's gonna sound crazy."

She actually laughed. "As long as it means _I'm_ not crazy – and that you're really here – I'll believe anything you ask me to."

"I'm really here," Steve promised, raising one hand to cup the side of her face and studying her features as though he meant to memorize them. "I've missed you, Peggy."

_Damn it, I am not going to cry – oh, hell._ The tears left wet streaks down her face, chilling the suddenly too-warm flesh of her cheeks. "I missed you, too." She broke their embrace and took his arm, tugging him toward a seat at her table. "Now come and tell me what happened."

He took hold of both her hands, gently preventing her from sitting. "It's a little loud in here, and it's kind of a long story. Would you come with me?" he asked, glancing toward the door.

"Of course. Just a moment," she said, fumbling to open her purse. She left an American bill on the table, enough to cover her wine and tip, and then took Steve's proffered arm. "Where are we headed?"

"Not far," he told her as they stepped out onto 53rd Street. They walked most of a block in comfortable silence, Peggy leaning slightly into his side, before Steve stopped and gestured to the entrance of an alley. She glanced down it, and blinked at the unexpected sight.

"Rather an odd place to put a police box," she observed, "and when did you start using them here in the States?"

He grinned, and Peggy couldn't remember a time she'd seen him look quite so pleased with himself. "It isn't exactly a police box," he told her, "and remember, you promised to believe me, no matter how impossible the story sounds."

"I did," she agreed, "so go on and tell it to me."

They began walking down the alleyway together, picking a path carefully around rubbish bins, crumpled newspapers, and other bits of detritus. "You're right: I did crash in the Arctic. The plane broke through the ice and started to go under, and I might've hit my head, so I don't remember much, besides the cold." His voice turned a little distant. "I understand that there were searches sent out to find the wreckage, but they never turned anything up. Not for a long time. I woke up, and..." He shook his head and started again. "When I woke up, it was the twenty-first century. They told me seventy years had passed."

The expression on her face must have been – well really, she couldn't have guessed, since she wasn't quite able to say what precisely she was feeling. Mostly she felt like she wanted to ask about fifty questions at once, and couldn't decide the order they should go in. He stopped, facing her, and raised a finger to her lips. "I told you it would sound crazy," he reminded her wryly. "But give me a chance to explain the rest."

She nodded, which he seemed to take as permission to continue. "You remember the Tesseract? The power source Schmidt was using for all those weapons?"

"Of course," she replied. "Howard called in two days ago and said he found it in the sea. He's still up there now, looking for you."

Peggy thought she saw a flash of regret cross Steve's face. He nodded. "Anyway, it was stolen from where the government had been keeping it, by–" he cut himself off. "This is a weird question, but which do you find easier to believe in: magic, or aliens?"

She blinked up at him. "Are those my only options?"

The wry grin was back. "'Fraid so. You didn't think that thing could have been natural, did you?"

"I suppose not," she conceded. "Well, if I have to pick between the two, I suppose I'd choose aliens."

"Yeah, me too," Steve agreed. "So it was stolen by an alien from a race called the Asgardians; apparently they came to Earth a long time ago, and Norse mythology was based on them. This alien, Loki, used the Tesseract to open a dimensional portal to bring through a whole army of other aliens, and we had to fight them off and get the thing back."

"We?"

She never got tired of seeing Steve smile. "I've sort of assembled a new team. I had some help finding them," he admitted. "Howard's son is part of it. He built himself this flying suit of armor; it's pretty impressive – but don't tell him I said so."

Peggy smirked. "The Howling Commandos, Part Two?"

He ducked his head and grinned. "We call ourselves 'The Avengers.' I didn't come up with the name. You'd like them, though; they're a great bunch of people."

"I'm sure I would," she agreed. "Though none of that explains how you got here from seventy years in the future."

"Well you have to let me finish the story," he told her. "All that happened _yesterday._ I didn't meet the guy with the time machine until today." They were standing beside the police box, and Steve slipped a key out of his pocket and unlocked the door. He pushed it open, and Peggy simply stared for a moment, her mind refusing to process what she was seeing.

"That is not a police box," she finally managed.

"Nope," Steve agreed, grinning. "It's a time machine. And it belongs to the Doctor." He pointed to a man in a brown jacket and a bow tie. The stranger was leaning over the railing of a catwalk that lined the walls of a very large room that should, on no account, have been able to fit inside a police box.

"Hello!" the man shouted to them. "Come on in, you two crazy lovebirds! Don't just hang about in the doorway – come inside and make yourselves at home!"

_Well. This certainly isn't how I expected this evening to go,_ Peggy thought. But when she felt the comforting warmth of Steve's hand on the small of her back, she smiled. _It's much better._ She glanced over her shoulder at Steve. "Allow me to make it clear, Captain, that you still have quite a bit of explaining to do."

"Yes, ma'am," he replied, and she couldn't help finding his smile infectious as she let him lead her into the bizarre blue box.

* * *

_I suppose, if I'm to be entirely objective about the situation,_ Peggy thought as she listened to Steve conclude his story about time-traveling aliens and electricity-stealing dinosaurs and Howard's son and the organization that the SSR had transformed into, _I must consider the possibility that I have gone mad._ She didn't like thinking of herself as the sort of person who might let grief consume her sanity; she had endured hardship before, and tragedy, and survived numerous incidents of mortal peril, and each time she had come through on her own two feet, shaken but whole. She felt her gaze wandering around the strange chamber. _How can_ this _be the time I go mad?_

The odd man in the bow tie who Steve had introduced as the Doctor approached them, grinning. "I'll bet I can guess what you're thinking," he offered, and then continued without pausing for her response. "You're wondering whether you can really be standing here, inside a machine that travels through time and space and looks like a little blue box, with one man from another planet and another man who's currently frozen in the Arctic – or whether you've just gone 'round the bend."

She arched a single sculpted eyebrow. "I'll admit, the thought had crossed my mind."

The Doctor dashed back over to the round console that, at a guess, was meant to control the time machine. "All right, I'll prove it to you. What's the most impressive, most breathtaking sight you can imagine?"

Apparently there was still a small part of her that had never grown out of her starry-eyed schoolgirl stage, because she found herself glancing at Steve's warm blue eyes. She resolutely turned her attention back to the Doctor. "Why do you ask?"

"It's quite simple," he replied, leaning against the console. "If you tell me the most beautiful place you can imagine, and I can bring you somewhere even _more_ majestic and awe-inspiring than that, then you clearly can't be imagining it. Ergo, all of this is real."

She considered this reasoning for a moment. "I'm not quite sure how much sense that makes," she began, "but all right. The Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland: I went there on a school trip when I was a girl, and it remains the grandest and most breathtaking natural sight I've ever seen."

The Doctor grinned so widely it must have hurt. "Excellent. Miss Carter, prepare to be amazed!"

"That's _Agent_ Carter, thank you," she corrected him sharply.

He had the good grace to look sheepish. "Right, of course – Agent Carter, my apologies." He began manipulating controls on the console, apparently at random. A sort of groaning, whirring sound filled the room, but neither the Doctor nor Steve seemed concerned by it, so Peggy assumed the sound was – for want of a more apt term – normal.

In a few moments, the noise faded away, and the Doctor stopped turning dials and pulling levers. He gestured to the door, which remained closed. "There you are, Agent Carter; whenever you're ready."

She glanced at Steve, who offered her his hand. She took it gladly. "Let's have a look," he offered.

"All right." They crossed to the entrance together. Peggy wondered what she would see on the other side of the door: some strange alien landscape, perhaps? A vision of the future, with flying cars and buildings disappearing into the sky? A little hesitantly, she reached out to touch the doorknob. It turned easily under her fingers, and the door swung open with a slight creak.

_Breathtaking_ was, in her experience, a purely metaphorical term; it described a sight that engendered feelings of awe and humble appreciation, even reverence. What she saw through the doorway literally made the breath catch in her throat, and she was unable to remember how to get her lungs working again for several seconds.

It was the Earth. They were standing out in space, looking down at a glowing blue-and-white sphere of glimmering oceans and swirling clouds. She could pick out the familiar shapes of continents beneath the bright streaks of weather. The planet hung against the majestic backdrop of a night sky that was so much larger and more vivid than she had ever seen from England.

She felt Steve's arms slip around her waist, and leaned back into the solid warmth of his chest. "In the future, they have all sorts of orbital satellites and space telescopes to take pictures of this," he breathed into her hair, "and the government has even landed manned missions on the Moon. I thought those pictures were so amazing; we never had anything like that. But they don't prepare you for really being here."

"It's beautiful," she replied simply. "I could never have dreamed of something like this." And as absurd as the idea had sounded when the Doctor first suggested it, that was what made her believe. She really was here, staring down at her home from outer space, in the embrace of a man she'd thought lost forever. She turned around in his arms until she could reach up and pull him down to her for a kiss.

The taste of his kiss was exactly as she remembered; the adrenaline surge of the race to catch Schmidt's plane had imprinted the sensation indelibly on her memory. The softness of his lips, the short brush of hair on the back of his head, it was all the same. The only difference was that he was clean-shaven now; their first kiss had been in the heat of a protracted battle, and a bit of five o'clock shadow had crept onto his jaw, sandpapery against her skin as she pressed her lips roughly to his.

For a while, her mind simply floated, lost in the moment. When it snapped back to the present, her eyes widened and she gasped against his mouth. "Steve!" She pulled away just far enough to meet his eyes. "You're still out there, back in the present! If we know where to look, Howard can find you – you don't have to be lost for seventy years!"

"There's... a bit of a problem with that, I'm afraid," the Doctor said. He was wandering slowly toward them, his hands stuffed in the pockets of his trousers. "You see, the discovery of that airplane in the Arctic and the resurrection of Captain America is a fixed point in time."

"What does that mean, precisely?" If her response was a bit more snappish than the Doctor deserved, Peggy hoped he would make allowances for the situation.

"For the most part, time is fluid; past events can be altered, and the course of history changed. "You might, for instance, go back to the early nineteenth century and explain to Napoleon what a horrifically bad idea it is to engage Russia in a land war during the winter, thereby altering the entire course of European history. You could travel to a planet in its infancy and muck about with the chemicals and amino acids present, influencing the development of the global ecology in any number of ways. _But,"_ he emphasized the word, "there are certain events throughout the history of the universe that are immutable; no matter how a time-traveler tries to interfere, no matter what choices are made, those events _must_ and _will_ play out as they have happened. Attempting to alter a fixed point..." he hesitated. "Is a bad idea."

"What happens?" Steve asked, the dullness of his tone suggesting that he already knew he wouldn't like the answer.

"Time itself begins to unravel, with all of history straining to happen at once, until the universe flies apart at the seams," he said. "It isn't as fun as it sounds; I don't recommend it."

"And Steve being pulled out of the ice in the twenty-first century is one of these 'fixed points'?" Peggy asked, trying to keep the cutting edge out of her tone, with limited success.

"I'm afraid so," the Doctor confirmed. "I checked the TARDIS's memory banks before you and Steve came back from the club, since I thought this might come up." He sighed. "I'm sorry."

"Damn." She stepped in closer to Steve, leaning her forehead against his shoulder and taking in the heat of his body. They were so _close;_ he was _right here..._

"Wait!" she exclaimed, pulling back again. "You're here now. Can you..." she broke off, and started again. "Do you want to stay?"

She watched the emotions flicker across his clear blue eyes; hope blazed strongly for a moment, then faded into the embers of resignation. "I want to, Peggy, so much. More than anything, from the moment I woke up in the future, I've wanted to be back here – in my own time. With you, and the Commandos, and everybody."

He leaned back against the frame of the open doorway, his arms still lightly encircling her. "But things are so different in the future. I thought it was bad during the war, but..." he looked down into her eyes. "We've had two alien invasions in the past _week._ I don't know if this is normal or what, but when that sort of thing happens again, they'll need me." He slipped an arm from around her waist and took one of her hands, lightly stroking the back of it with his thumb. "And no matter how much we want it, 1944 _doesn't_ need me. I've seen the history books. We win. Without Captain America." She could hear his voice wavering a little. "I have to go where I'm needed, Peggy – no matter what I want for myself."

Her throat constricted painfully, and she squeezed her eyes shut against the tears burning behind her eyes. _He's right,_ she thought bitterly, _Damn it all, he's right._ Duty was fundamental to Steve Rogers, as inseparable a part of him as his stubbornness, or his inability to talk to women – and much more so than the super-soldier serum or the outfit with the star on the chest. She could never ask him to turn his back on that duty, and if he did, he wouldn't be the man she–

"Hey, hold on," he interrupted her train of thought, clutching her hand against his chest. "I don't know if you'd consider it – I know it's an awful lot to ask, but," he caught her gaze in his, "what do you think about coming with me? To the future?"

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out; there were too many impressions jostling one another inside her mind for her to form a single cogent thought. _The future. Technology, and history, and culture – and Steve – and manned missions to the Moon, of all things!_ It's not as though she'd be leaving much behind; she had no family left that she cared to keep in touch with. There were a few friends, from school and from the service, but they'd mostly drifted apart thanks to the war. In fact, the war had consumed most of her life for the past several years; the only thing she really had was her work. "My work," she finally blurted out. "They've been talking about pulling me back in for another assignment with British Intelligence, now that SSR no longer has a project or a mission. I would need to know that my absence wasn't going to change anything important." She turned to look at the Doctor. "Can you do that – are you able to find that out?"

For the first time in the conversation, the Doctor grinned. "Of course I can! The TARDIS knows everything!" He darted back to the console and pulled out a panel with buttons that looked very much like a typewriter's keys. He tapped at them, peering into a screen of some sort. "Agent Margaret Carter of MI5, liaison to the United States Strategic Scientific Reserve." He muttered to himself as he read what she assumed was her service file, and a lance of ice shot through her as she saw his cheerful demeanor suddenly chill. He raised his eyes from the screen and faced them again.

"In a few months from now, you'll have been reassigned, and will be working to track down Nazi agents on British soil. You will be instrumental in preventing the assassination of Prime Minister Winston Churchill." There were shadows in his eyes that hinted at something more than he said, but she didn't press him. If it was bad news, she didn't want Steve to hear until she knew what it was. "It's your decision, though," the Doctor continued gently. "If you want to go, I'll take you."

The tears were gone now; in their place was a hollowness, as though she was in pain but her body was too numb to feel the ache. Steve's other arm tightened around her waist, and she leaned gratefully against him. She shook her head. "I can't," she said simply. "I can't risk changing history. I have a responsibility." She raised her eyes to Steve's face, hoping to see his forgiveness there.

What she found was understanding; in Steve's mind, there was nothing to forgive. There was simply the awful reality, the burden that they both bore. "I know," was all he said, before pulling her tight against his chest.

"Still," the Doctor began, the brightness in his voice sounding only a little forced, "you're in the TARDIS. You can stay as long as you like, and afterward I'll drop you back five minutes after you left! No sense in having a time machine if you don't use it to cheat a bit, now and then."

_More time..._ Peggy felt something in her chest warm a little at that thought. She lifted her face to Steve's and smiled, and if her smile was a watery one, she didn't think it would matter to him. "We get to have our dance."

The smile on Steve's face was a little shaky as well, but it reached his eyes. "You're still gonna have to teach me," he said.

"I'll do that," she promised. She turned her head, looking at the Doctor while she pressed her cheek against Steve's shoulder. "Thank you, Doctor. We'll gladly accept your hospitality for as long as you care to extend it."

"Excellent!" the Doctor declared, shaking off the last vestiges of his somber mood. "The entire universe is yours for the asking, kids – the whole of time and space! We can go to Rome in the first century, or the Boeshane Peninsula in the _fifty_ -first century." He paused, and shook his head. "Maybe not that last; might startle your sensibilities a bit. But the rings of Saturn, or the Horsehead Nebula, or the Opius Expanse – all of it, waiting to be explored!"

Peggy turned her head to look out the open doorway of the TARDIS again. "I don't know about Steve, but I still haven't quite gotten over the view from here," she said. "Maybe in a little while, you can recommend a place?"

"Certainly! You just come find me when you're ready; I'll be down here checking the connectors on the device that Steve's friend gave us."

Silence reigned for a long moment as she and Steve stood in the doorway, holding each other and looking down at the Earth. She watched Great Britain set over the curve of the horizon before breaking the stillness. "Steve," she began.

"Yeah?" he replied softly. She savored the rumble of his voice, her head pressed against his chest.

"I'd like to ask a favor of you, if you wouldn't mind."

He gently caught her chin and directed her face up to look at him. "Anything, Peggy."

She felt the corner of her mouth curve up into a slight smile. "I'd like you to draw a picture for me. I fully intend on taking every advantage of the Doctor's invitation, but I'd like to have something to hold onto afterward. Something from you."

He leaned down and kissed her gently. "I can do that," he agreed. "The Doctor said he has all sorts of supplies in the other rooms of this place. I'll bet I can find some drawing paper and pencils or charcoals or something." He broke away and headed for a door she hadn't noticed on the other side of the room, but paused after a single step, catching up her hand again. "Please still be here when I get back."

She squeezed his hand, fighting back the renewed stinging behind her eyes. "I promise."

Her gaze followed Steve as he crossed the room and disappeared through the doorway. When he was out of sight, she left the threshold and went to find the Doctor. He was crouched in a sub-level beneath the floor of the TARDIS, surrounded by wiring and ducts and tubes and all manner of things that she assumed kept a time machine running. Smoothing the skirt of her dress beneath her, she sat down on the top step and looked at him squarely. "There was something else you didn't mention before, wasn't there? In my file."

The Doctor set down the device he was fiddling with – a small metal cylinder with a glowing blue ring embedded in the top – and leaned his arms on the railing at the bottom of the steps. "There was," he confirmed.

"I want to know."

He nodded. "I meant what I said before; if you don't want to go back after hearing this, it's your choice. I'll take you wherever you want to go." Taking her steady gaze as a reply, he continued. "You were closing in on the spy, and spotted him just as he made the attempt on Churchill's life. You were shot with a bullet meant for the Prime Minister. Your file records you dying in service to your country a little more than four months from the day you met Steve at the club."

Peggy drew a long, slow breath. "Thank you, Doctor. Unfortunately, that doesn't change my decision. I have a duty, and I knew when I first swore my oath of service that this duty might lead to my death. At least it will be a meaningful death; I've known too many good men and women in this war who lost their lives senselessly, to no purpose."

"All deaths in war are senseless," the Doctor replied grimly.

She inclined her head, acknowledging the statement. "Still, I want to thank you for giving me this opportunity. It's a little easier to accept what's to come, knowing I've had this time with Steve that should never have been possible. I don't plan to waste it."

* * *

The charm of watching the cotton wisps of cloud swirl across the face of their world still hadn't palled by the time Steve returned with a sketchbook and pencils, nor did it fade in the hours they spent sitting on the steps near the open doorway, looking out at the planet against its star-speckled backdrop of night. They talked about the twenty-first century, and Steve's new team, and began sharing the things they'd never had time to learn about each other's lives before the war. Peggy didn't even think about how long they'd been sitting together, knees bumping gently against one another's, until Steve pointed out that the line of sunlight crawling across the curve of the Earth had reached America's eastern coast. It was morning; they'd sat up together the whole night through.

As much as she hated to spend a single moment of their stolen time together asleep, her eyes were starting to burn with the need to close them, and she suspected that if she tried to stay up much longer, she'd end up dropping off with her head pillowed on Steve's shoulder. "I'm afraid I won't be good for much if I don't get a bit of sleep soon," she admitted reluctantly.

The Doctor, who until now had politely disappeared into the lower level of the control room beneath the central console, popped his head back up again. "Bedrooms down the hall," he informed them. "Won't be much to see around here for a while; I need to park the TARDIS on the Rift in Cardiff for at least twelve hours to recharge, so you may as well sleep through the boring bits. She should be ready by the time you're up, and then it's off to someplace new and exciting!"

Peggy smiled. _He almost seems more eager to be off exploring than we are, as if he didn't bang around the universe in a time machine every day of the week._ "Thank you," she told him, taking Steve's hand to let him help her up.

"Not at all," he waved her off. "Can't have you falling asleep in the face of the Face of Boe, or whoever we stumble across. Now off with you!" He made shooing motions with both hands, and she and Steve followed his gestures out the door Steve had used earlier.

The corridors were curious, oddly-shaped passages with junctions that bore no indication of where they led. She could have sworn they'd passed through the same intersection three times before they found the hallway that sported the crew cabins.

Steve opened one of the doors experimentally and peered inside; it should have been unsurprising, that the living quarters of a ship that was bigger on the inside looked like real bedrooms, rather than cramped barracks. There was a carpet, overhead lighting, a spacious full bed, and a large wardrobe against one wall. The opposite door, that Peggy could just spot if she peeked around the door frame, most likely led to the loo. Steve took a step back out of the room and turned to her. "I guess these are the rooms he meant," he observed obviously, shifting his feet with sudden unease.

Realizing the cause of his nerves, Peggy suppressed a smile and instead straightened her spine and gave him a stern look. "Let me make one thing perfectly clear," she told him sharply, "if the circumstances were any different at all, you'd get nothing more than a peck on the cheek and a 'Good night, soldier,' and I'd be off to find my own bunk and see you in the morning." Now she softened her stance and let the gentleness back into her expression. "But things standing as they do, whatever moments we spend here on this impossible ship are all we'll ever have together. I'm not of a mind to waste them on propriety." She felt her cheeks coloring a little at her own bluntness. "I hope that doesn't change your opinion of me."

Steve nearly dropped the sketchbook in his haste to step closer to her and slip reassuring arms around her. "Peggy, there's no way I could think less of you. I mean–" he cut himself off, grimacing. "I mean, I could never think poorly of you. Sorry, I'm still bad at this," he offered with a self-deprecating grin.

An answering smile pulled at her lips, and she let him fold her into his embrace. "Not so bad," she told him, slipping her own arms around his neck. "At least, not as long as you invite me in."

He did better than that, scooping her legs up with one arm and supporting her back with the other, to carry her like a bride over the threshold and into the room. The sound that escaped her as he swept her up was definitely more girlish than military, but she didn't mind much; discipline and decorum could wait until tomorrow. Whenever tomorrow got around to coming – she was in no rush.

He set her down on the bed and sat beside her, the mattress sinking slightly under their combined weight. She didn't feel springs; instead, it seemed to be a firm sort of cushion underneath the bedding. Then she stopped paying attention to the furniture entirely, as Steve leaned in close, and she turned her face to catch his lips with hers.

Though they spent a lovely few minutes getting privately reacquainted, both of them were wearing too much for it to get very far, and when their lips parted again, a faint twinge behind her eyes reminded Peggy that she'd sat up the whole night through. If she were honest with herself, she wanted nothing more in that moment than to curl up against Steve's chest and fall asleep to the rhythm of his heartbeat. "I think perhaps we should look for something to sleep in, since I don't fancy ruining this dress." If the red dress had carried a sentimental attachment before, that value had redoubled after tonight.

Steve nodded, his own cheeks reddening a little. "Right. He said we should help ourselves to whatever we needed, and the ship would keep us out of anything we shouldn't get into." He set the sketchbook on the bedside table and watched Peggy as she rose from the bed and opened the nearby wardrobe.

Inside hung a mixture of clothing, some cut to fit a woman – though the number of trousers she found was a bit surprising – and the rest in a more masculine style. The men's clothes looked a bit too narrow about the shoulders and chest for Steve, but she thought there might be something serviceable for herself among the other lot. After pushing aside a few blouses and jackets, she finally found what she was after: a nightgown of shimmery but opaque blue fabric. It had a silky texture, but wasn't actual silk, and it was lined with bits of lace that she hoped wouldn't be too scratchy. Her eyes widened a touch at how high the hem was. _Perhaps its original owner was on the short side? Or that might just be the fashion of sleepwear from wherever – whenever? – this comes from._ In any event, she supposed it wasn't as though what the nightgown would fail to conceal was fated to remain a mystery to Steve for much longer, regardless.

_Nevertheless, there's something to be said for preserving a bit of mystery._ "Go ahead and see if you can find anything that will suit. I'm going to go and change," she told Steve, and headed for the far door. As she'd guessed, it contained the toilet, a shower cubicle, a sink, and a vanity. She reached behind her and unfastened her dress, slipping carefully out of it, and draped it over an empty towel rack before donning the nightgown and going about her evening ablutions. A brief glance in the mirror revealed, to her belated horror, the devastation that her tearful evening had wrought on her mascara. Still, her smeared eyes hadn't seemed to bother Steve any, so she resolved that they were of little consequence. When she was finished, she padded back out to the bedroom, barefoot, her face clean of makeup.

Steve was waiting for her, stripped out of his dress uniform and clad in a pair of tartan-patterned soft cotton trousers with a drawstring waist. _At least he found something to sleep in._ He turned to face her when she reentered the room, and froze in place, staring at her, lips slightly parted. _Do I really look so different without the lipstick and all the rest?_ she thought, a little put out. She arched a single eyebrow pointedly at him.

In three steps, he crossed the room to her, his wondering look giving way to a wide smile. "I didn't think you could be any more beautiful," he breathed. One arm moved to encircle her waist, while his right hand came up to cradle her cheek.

She let her hand rest lightly on his bare chest, as she'd been so tempted to do that day long ago in New York. His skin was warm and smooth and firm. She smiled. "I'm not going to disappear the moment you turn your back," she assured him, only half-teasing, "and I imagine that mooning over the color of my eyes is going to wear thin for you after a day or two of it."

He leaned down to kiss her, quick and affectionate this time, and the familiar manner of it made her feel warm all over. She much preferred comfortable familiarity to awe. "I doubt it," he retorted, "but I think I can keep from writing sonnets."

"For the best, certainly," she agreed with a hint of mischief. "You're an artist, not a poet."

Steve brushed a stray curl of dark hair behind her ear. "You don't mind, skipping all the proper courtship?"

Slowly, she slid her hands up to twine her fingers behind his neck. "If we had the time, I'd let you spend months taking me to the cinema or to picnics in the park, and let you walk me to my front door and kiss me good-night. But all we have is here and now, for however long this holiday lasts. I want this, Steve – as much as you do. I could never regret what we do together, but I know I'll regret what we don't."

His arms tightened around her, pulling her close against him. "Then I want to give you few regrets as I can."

"Good," she whispered against his neck, squeezing just as tightly for a moment. Then she released him, and when the circle of his arms parted, she stepped back. "Your turn, if you need it," she told him, glancing in the direction of the toilet. "I'll be waiting for you."

However much Steve was reluctant to be parted from her, there appeared to be some things even the serum couldn't help him avoid; he nodded and stepped past her to the other room. When he closed the door, she climbed into the bed. The fabric of the sheets was unfamiliar, but it was soft and warmed quickly to her body. She snuggled down in the bed and let herself doze. It was odd how safe she felt in this profoundly unfamiliar and unusual place; perhaps Steve's presence made it seem less strange here.

Peggy was half asleep by the time Steve returned to the bedroom. He eased himself gently onto the bed, trying not to disturb her, but as soon as he slipped under the sheet, she moved to nestle into the curve of his embrace. He rested his head on the pillow beside hers. "Good night," he whispered.

Her hand, draped loosely across his arm encircling her, squeezed his forearm slightly. "Good night. And Steve?"

"Hm?"

"Still be here when I wake up, please."

He bent his head to nuzzle against her ear. "You too."

"I will," she promised as his eyes closed.

* * *

There was no clock in the room, so Peggy had no idea how much time had passed when she awoke in the dimly-lit bedroom to the restless shifting beside her. The shifting turned into thrashing as she sat up slowly and turned to look at Steve.

His face was pinched with distress, and his uneasy tossing and turning was punctuated by sharp twitches. He was still asleep, judging by the frantic movement of his eyes behind his closed eyelids. Now and then, brief snatches of muttering would escape his lips; most of it was unintelligible, but Peggy, watching his face closely with a mixture of alarm and uncertainty, caught the occasional coherent phrase. "...Morita, back to position..." he murmured urgently.

The Howling Commandos – the war. That was the nightmare he was reliving. She reached a hand toward him to wake him, but pulled away when she noticed the tension visible in his arms and back. The one hand that wasn't covered by the blanket was curled into a tight fist. She'd seen the accidental violence that could result from tapping a soldier on the shoulder when he didn't know you were there; a lance corporal in the unit attached to SSR had spent two weeks in the stockade after reflexively decking his sergeant in the mess hall when the man had come up behind him. "Combat fatigue," they'd called it at the time.

Instead, Peggy slipped silently out of the bed, out of range of thrashing limbs, and crouched beside the mattress, putting her face on a level with his. She watched him for a little longer, trying to decide the best way to handle the situation. The strangled whimpers that filled in the spaces between his muttering told her that she couldn't let him remain locked in this nightmare, but she had to be very careful about how she brought him out of it.

His arm came up to cover his face, and then reached out toward someone she couldn't see. "...No! Hawkeye, look out!" His hand clawed helplessly at empty air.

She had let this go on long enough. "Steve," she called softly, but firmly. "Steve, it's me. It's Peggy. Wake up; you're dreaming."

Some sound must have broken through the grip of his nightmare, as his agitation increased, and a fist shot out to thump against her pillow, inches away from where she leaned against the edge of the mattress. The pillow burst under the sudden assault, and Peggy fought the reflex to recoil. But the exertion seemed to jar him out of his fugue, as an instant later his head jolted up, eyes open. He stared at her for a moment, slowly recognizing her and where he was. "Huh... Peggy?" Then his eyes darted to the pillow he'd destroyed. Bits of fluff clung to his hand and spilled onto the sheets. "What did – oh God, are you okay?" His eyes widened in horror, realizing what he might have done if she hadn't moved.

"Shh, Steve, I'm all right." Now she reached tentatively toward him, stopping a few inches away from his hand to let him choose whether to make the final contact. He did, clinging to her as to a rope over an abyss. She climbed back onto the bed and pulled him gently toward her, so that he was half-lying in her lap. "I'm more worried about you."

The lines of his shoulders and back were still taut as steel cables, but physical contact with her seemed to be relaxing him a little, so she began carding her fingers through his hair. He leaned into her touch, letting a few moments pass in silence before speaking. "It was the war," he began, "and the Chitauri invasion. Sort of mixed together. Energy bolts flying everywhere. Explosions, buildings collapsing. My team in danger – both of them. During the invasion, the rooftop position Barton had taken was swarmed. He jumped – I saw him falling. I didn't know until after that he'd made it. It was like watching..." His throat closed on the name, but she knew. _It was like watching Bucky fall._

She felt an answering tightness in her own throat. "So much has happened to you, in such a short time," she sighed. She knew how futile it was to wish she could shield him from any of it; this was a man who had tried to lie his way into the army because he couldn't stand the thought of others fighting in his stead. He would take any danger and hardship on his own shoulders if it meant sparing someone else. But still she wished.

Cheek still pillowed on her thigh, he shook his head. "That's not even..." He took a breath. "I could have handled all that, but... I lost everything. Everything – Bucky, the Commandos, the whole world. _You."_ An arm snaked around her waist, pulling him closer to her. "Everything was so different. There was nothing I could..."

He didn't seem able to say any more, but he didn't have to. _There was nothing familiar, nothing he could lean on or trust. He must have felt so alone._ She thought of the first week of her posting to SSR in the States, and how unfamiliar the accents, the food, even the air had been. She'd known no one, of course. And being a woman put her at even more of a disadvantage, socially. She hadn't been able to let down her guard for a moment for weeks; it had been exhausting. But even then, she'd known that home and MI5 were waiting for when the assignment was over. There had been no such promise for Steve.

"I'm sorry," she told him, helplessly. "But for whatever time we're given here, you've got me. However I can help."

He nodded against her abdomen, his face half-buried in the blue fabric. "Thank you."

She thought about asking if talking more about what had happened, trying to work through the events that had given rise to his nightmare, would help – but shook her head. He would need to talk those things out, but later. Gradually. For now, reassurance and comfort seemed to be the order of the day, and she could manage those well enough. Nurturing wasn't her strongest skill – she'd have made a _terrible_ nurse – but Steve brought those feelings out in her.

"Think we could try sleeping again?" he asked after another few minutes had passed.

He had turned his face up toward her, and she moved her hand so she could look at him squarely. "Are you ready for that?"

"Yeah. Don't think that'll happen again, tonight. Talking..." He half-shrugged, an awkward gesture in the position he was lying in. "I haven't really talked to anybody about it before. SHIELD had doctors, psychiatrists, but..."

_But how could anyone else understand what he'd been through? How could he trust anyone in that strange new future enough to share it with them?_ "I know," she said simply. "All right. Move over so I can get under the covers. It's cold in here." It wasn't, but he obligingly made room for her, curling around her once she'd slipped between the sheets. This time she turned to face toward him, settling one hand on his hip, and entwining their legs. He slid an arm under their remaining pillow, and together they found their way to a more peaceful night's rest.

* * *

She was glad they'd taken the time that morning to rummage through what the Doctor called the "changing room," a larger chamber within the TARDIS filled with overflowing closets and wardrobes, sporting clothing from countless eras, past and future. At the time, she'd been most pleased by the snug-fitting ladies' top she'd found with the Union Jack emblazoned across the front – Steve had teased her until she put it on, saying that it was her turn to wear her patriotism on her chest for a change – but now, she was much more grateful for the tennis shoes she'd found at the bottom of one of the closets. They made all this running much easier.

"Do your part to keep Station Thirteen healthy!" chirped a recorded voice from behind her. Peggy spared a brief glance over her shoulder as she ran: the blasted machines weren't gaining on them, but they weren't falling behind either. "Recycle your trash for a cleaner tomorrow!" another robot urged her with automated cheer.

_Lovely message; if only it weren't_ us _they were planning to "recycle."_ She kept close on the Doctor's heels. Steve, with his longer strides and enhanced muscles, could easily outpace them both, but he held back enough that they weren't left completely behind.

Which turned out to be fortunate; as they rounded the corner toward the bank of lifts, another four of the sanitation 'bots lurched toward them, claw-arms extended. "Please deposit refuse in the red circle!" one said helpfully. The rim of the cylindrical maw of its matter-to-energy recycler glowed neon red.

"Okay, new plan," the Doctor announced, "let's _not_ go that way. Um." He looked around in urgent bewilderment.

Peggy saw the way out a moment before he did. "There!" she pointed, and suited deed to word, darting to the edge of the avenue and stepping onto the edge of the hydroponic flower-bed to hoist herself up onto the suspended path above them. She felt familiar, strong hands boosting her up, and she clambered easily onto the upper level. Steve helped the Doctor up after her, and then backed up to take a running leap.

"Recycle your trash for a cleaner tomorrow!" The robot's claw-like grasper closed around Steve's upper arm. He struggled, trying to pull away from the rogue machine before its fellows could close in on him.

"Steve!" _I can't just sit by helplessly and watch. Not this time._ She slipped her legs back over the edge of the catwalk, ready to drop down to help him – but felt a hand close around her own wrist, stopping her. She looked up into the Doctor's face and saw him shake his head.

Fortunately, the cleaning 'bot was no match for Captain America. Steve wrenched away from the robot's grip, tearing its arm off its frame entirely. The claw-arm remained clamped around his bicep as Steve made the running jump to grab onto the railing of the sky-walk. He pulled himself up as the other 'bots converged below him, reaching futilely up at his dangling legs and repeating their amiable recycling slogans.

As Peggy stood up and took a firm grip on her composure, Steve pried the metal claw off of his arm. The pincers came away bloody, but she could see immediately that the wounds they had inflicted weren't deep; with Steve's augmented healing, the cuts would be gone in twenty minutes. Assuming they all hadn't been recycled by then.

"Are we any closer to figuring out what caused these things to go haywire?" Steve asked the Doctor?

Brandishing what he had cheerfully introduced to Peggy as his sonic screwdriver, the Doctor pointed it at the disembodied metal claw and activated the tool, producing a humming sound and a green glow. "No control systems in the arms," he muttered, glancing down at the disarmed robot, still flailing after Steve with its remaining claw, "but now that somebody's got some exposed circuits, we might be getting somewhere..." He aimed the screwdriver at the injured 'bot and scanned again. "Aha! Clever, clever little robots!" he marveled.

"What is it?" she demanded.

The Doctor turned to her and grinned. "The sanitation 'bots are all networked together. It helps them coordinate their clean-up patrols, _and,"_ he emphasized, "it allows them to share information about new sources of rubbish. When one of them recycles something new, it lets the other 'bots know, so they learn to recognize it as trash."

Peggy felt the color drain from her face. "But that means... someone must have fed one of these robots a _person."_

"A corpse, probably," the Doctor agreed. "Unfortunately, these 'bots aren't quite clever enough to tell the difference between living and dead flesh."

"Aren't there some sort of safeguards built into these things to protect against this sort of malfunction?" Steve asked. "I've only worked with Tony Stark for a couple of days, but he's always bragging about the security backups on all his technology."

The Doctor shrugged. "Almost certainly, but it looks like someone overrode them. Which makes sense, if they were trying to dispose of a body in secret."

"So what do we do – can we find the central controls and shut them down, or turn the safety protocols back on?"

"I'm not sure we'll have time for that," Peggy cut in. They followed her gaze to the end of the sky-walk, where a small crowd of the maintenance robots had gathered and were beginning to trundle toward them. The far end of the sky-walk terminated in a shallow stairwell, and she could spot at least two of the 'bots at the base of the steps. The TARDIS was three levels away by lift, and all of the shops – the ones that didn't have recycling 'bots in them, at least – were buttoned up tight by the space station residents that had taken refuge in them. There was no way out. _We have to find a way to shut them down or disable them from here._

Her eyes widened, and she spun to face the Doctor. "You said that whatever one of them eats, the rest of them recognize as rubbish to recycle?"

"Yes, that's–" The rest of what he was going to say was cut off as she snatched the metal claw from his hand.

"Steve, come with me, and distract the nearest one." She ran down the sky-walk, toward the stairs. Though she'd taken him by surprise, he caught up with her within moments. She heard the Doctor pelting along behind them, but was too focused on her plan to spare him much thought.

She watched Steve pull ahead of her as they approached the staircase, taking the shallow, terrace-like steps at a gallop. The 'bots at the foot of the stairs noticed him, and began their chorus of "Recycle your trash for a cleaner tomorrow!" while closing the distance toward him. Their treads couldn't navigate the wide steps easily; they were able to lever themselves up, but it was a laborious process.

While one of them was midway through the procedure of trying to heft itself up onto the first step, claws extended toward Steve, Peggy made her move. Blessing the rubber-soled tennis shoes, she ran up to the 'bot and dropped the severed claw-arm into its red-rimmed recycling bin. It froze for a moment while its matter-to-energy converter digested the foreign object, and then the sensor array mounted on the top of its frame swept the area around it in a 360-degree arc, searching. Nearby, the other 'bot that had been struggling to reach Steve did the same.

The two robots noticed each other simultaneously and abandoned their quests to climb the stairs, their treads dropping back to the deck with a _thump._ They converged on each other, grasping arms extended. "Please deposit refuse in the red circle!" said one. "Do your part to keep Station Thirteen healthy!" intoned the other. And then they started tearing each other apart.

Peggy darted back up the stairs to look across the sky-walk at the pack of 'bots crossing toward them. They had stopped in the middle of the elevated path and were attacking each other, tearing off anything their sharp, powerful claws could grab and stuffing it into their bins. Arms, sensors, speaker-boxes, even bits of frame and treads were dropped into the recycling converters. Looking down at the lower level, she could see that all the 'bots were doing the same, cannibalizing each other and recycling the parts.

It was more than a little disturbing to watch. Even when she looked away from the carnage of metal and circuits, she could still hear the cacophony of rending steel and jolly recycling slogans, the latter fading into distorted wails as the speakers emitting them were converted into energy.

In a few minutes, it was over. The robots that remained were hopelessly crippled, blundering about without arms or sensors, impotently begging anyone who would listen to deposit their refuse in the red circle. Several were tipped over, their treads spinning against empty air. Most had been reduced to nothing more than spare parts.

Her momentary sense of horror at their plight quickly gave way to relief, and she hugged Steve, and then the Doctor, and then Steve again. "Do you think it's over?" she asked the Doctor, lingering in Steve's embrace for a moment.

"I think it's mostly clean-up from here on out," he replied. "That's something the good people of Station Thirteen will have to work out how to manage for themselves for a while."

Steve looked down at the devastated remains of the maintenance 'bots. "After this, I doubt they'll mind too much."

The Doctor clapped his hands together. "All right, kids, back to the TARDIS! It's almost tea-time, and a bite to eat in New France sounds like just the thing."

"Tea-time?" Peggy asked. "Has it been that long since we landed?"

"Well, it's tea-time _somewhere,"_ the Doctor retorted. "We've got a time machine. And I'm peckish."

Swallowing a laugh, Peggy raised her hands in a conciliatory gesture. "All right, Doctor; lead the way!"

* * *

It was a memory that she would treasure, and revisit every night, until the day she died.

_The Doctor hadn't told them precisely where they were going, but something in her heart had recognized England the moment the door of the TARDIS opened. Still, it wasn't the England she remembered. It was getting on toward evening on a chill February day – only four days shy of the Feast of Saint Valentine, as it turned out – and though the layers she was swathed in kept her mostly warm, she was glad of the wrap that clung to her bare shoulders. When they stepped out of the TARDIS and onto the lawn, she gasped (rather, she tried to gasp, but she was corseted within an inch of her life) when she saw where they were._

_Buckingham Palace._

_"Come along, you two," the Doctor had said, leading the way forward with a twirl of the cane he had picked up from somewhere, and they headed toward the main gate._

_There was a line in the receiving area where couples in elaborate gowns and suits stood waiting to be presented and announced. As they waited their turn, she fussed with Steve's ascot and brushed at a few bits of lint clinging to his tailcoat. The top hat made him look even taller, and she couldn't help but think he presented a rather dashing figure._

_Steve had smiled indulgently at her nervousness. It was easy enough for him; Buckingham Palace was as alien a realm to him as that fortieth-century space station!_ He wouldn't be so composed if we had gone back to meet Abraham Lincoln, _she thought with bruised dignity._

_Then it was their turn. The Doctor presented a wallet with a piece of blank paper in it to the man charged with announcing the new arrivals, and whispered their names to him. "Doctor Smith and guests, Captain Steven Rogers and Lady Margaret Carter!" They stepped forward together, and Peggy found herself face-to-face with Queen Victoria and her new husband, Prince Albert. Her face suddenly red, Peggy curtseyed deeply, as Steve bowed beside her. The maneuver was only slightly awkward in the wide-skirted gown, but she was proud of herself for managing it neatly._

_"Welcome, my dears," the Queen told them. She was positively beaming, and kept exchanging adoring glances with the Prince between greeting guests._ They look so happy, _Peggy thought, as she was hurried off to the side to make room for the next set of invitees to be announced._ I know how she feels...

_Thankfully, there was no catastrophe to avert at the wedding celebration, for that was what it was. She led Steve into a quiet corner and taught him the steps to a simple waltz, glancing occasionally at other couples dancing to pick up any period-appropriate variations from the version she knew. He was a quick study and the serum had done wonders for his physical coordination, which was just as well; she didn't think her delicate dancing slippers would survive much clumsiness on his part._

_When the musicians took up their instruments again, she and Steve joined the other celebrants out on the floor, and they danced. Steve held her right hand in his left, with his right arm curled gently about her corseted waist, and whirled her lightly across the floor. The perfection of the moment managed to eclipse even the awe she felt for their surroundings; Buckingham Palace seemed to fade away, leaving only her, Steve, and the music. Judging by the look in his eyes as he gazed down at her, he was just as lost in their dance as she was. They moved together as one, with no thought for anything but one another, talking softly about whatever passed through their minds or silently savoring each other's company, until the music stopped again._

_Standing there under the faintly flickering gas lamps of the ballroom, waiting for the musicians to resume their duties, Peggy realized something: she was in love with Steve Rogers._

It took Peggy a moment to fit her skirts through the door to their bedroom in the TARDIS, both of them still laughing at something Steve had said. She felt a little tipsy and giggly, though she hadn't drunk enough champagne at the palace for it to have gone to her head – she had not relished the notion of needing to use the toilet while dressed in this rig-out. Speaking of which... "Steve, give me a hand out of this thing, would you?"

She glanced over her shoulder and noted his startled look. As much as she intended for this evening to end a certain way, that wasn't the intention behind her request. "These gowns were designed with the idea that a lady had a maid to help her off with them. If I try to do it myself, I'll ruin it, and it's too lovely for that. Please?"

Finally, he seemed to remember that their last few weeks in this room hadn't been exactly chaste, and stepped in close to help her out of the dress, corset, and petticoats. She carefully hung up the garments to keep them from getting wrinkled, and then turned to face Steve wearing only her soft silk under-gown. Steve smiled and took a step to close the distance between them, resting his hands on her hips as he leaned down to kiss her.

Peggy tilted her head up and opened herself to the kiss for a few long, lingering moments before pulling away. "As dapper as you look in that outfit, soldier, my plans for this evening don't involve you wearing it all night." Hiding a smirk at the way his ears reddened at that, she leaned against the wardrobe door and watched with languid interest as Steve unbuttoned his waistcoat and began removing his own clothing.

By mutual, unspoken consent, they had been taking their intimate exploration of one another slowly, though whether it was out of deference to Steve's inexperience or her own desire to draw out the act of sharing themselves with one another, she couldn't say. But it seemed that tonight, they had both decided that there would be no holding back. As Steve shucked the last of his garb, Peggy reached up and unlaced the gathered neckline of her under-dress, letting it slip off her shoulders and over her hips, pooling at her feet.

She couldn't remember the last time she had been this open, this exposed, with another person, but being with Steve didn't make her feel vulnerable. He respected her as well as desired her – but the worshipful expression in those blue eyes would have to go. With a small smile, she moved to fill the little distance between them, put her hands on his shoulders, hitched one leg around his hip, and pulled herself up his body, closing her mouth over his in a deep kiss.

Steve suddenly found himself with an armful of Peggy wrapped around him, jolting rather neatly out of his reverence. This was no untouchable goddess; she was his equal, his match, and very touchable indeed, as he'd had ample opportunity to discover of late. His arms wrapped around her, cupping the firm flesh of her back and rear and pressing her closer to him, as he gave himself over to her kiss. Peggy had slipped one hand behind his head and twined the fingers of her fist in the short hair just above the nape of his neck. Her other hand cradled his face as though it were something dear and precious, her thumb tracing soft caresses along his cheek.

Breaking the kiss, Peggy's mouth wandered along the line of Steve's jaw to his ear; she nibbled lightly on his ear. Before she could suggest that they move to the bed, he seemed to anticipate her thought, turning to lay her gently down on the sheets. He covered her mouth again with his as he knelt over her, but his kisses soon drifted from her lips down her throat. Peggy smiled; Steve may not have had much experience with women when she met him, but he was a fast learner. One of his hands found the curve of her breast, and he gently rolled the stiffening nipple between his thumb and forefinger; her back arched up toward him, pushing her body into his touch.

He was nibbling lightly at the side of her neck now, just above the place where it joined her shoulder. Ever since he'd discovered how sensitive her neck was during an innocent shoulder rub, Steve had barely been able to keep away from it – much to her satisfaction, truth be told. Now, the gentle play of his teeth and tongue across skin eager and primed for his touch made her practically melt into the bedsheets. She thought she might have murmured something, but couldn't have said what.

Still lower his attentions traveled, as he traced the line of her collarbone with his tongue. Then he moved down the swell of her breast, nosing lightly into the valley between them as he continued his line of kisses, and found her free nipple with his lips. The soft, warm sensation was just too firm a touch to be ticklish, and it sent ripples of stimulation down into her belly. A few moments later she felt the touch draw away, and opened her eyes to discover a wide blue gaze looking up at her. "Is this okay? Not too hard?" he asked.

Affection curled her lips up into a smile. So many people who had only ever known the super-soldier in him would never believe that Steve could be uncertain or hesitant about anything. Peggy brought her hand up to twine her fingers lightly in his hair. "It's wonderful," she breathed, "don't stop."

Peggy had never paid a great deal of attention to her breasts; she thought they looked quite nice, but in terms of sensation, she was used to thinking of them as an area that a beau would get more enjoyment out of than she did. With Steve, though, something was different. Maybe it was the careful way he watched her reactions, adjusting the pressure of his touch until he saw her gasp, taking it slowly to let the sensation build as if he had all the time and patience in the world. Whatever it was, Peggy could already feel the heat rising between her legs, and she was torn between wanting Steve never to stop what he was doing, and needing him to move lower, to the source of that flame.

As though he sensed her conflict, Steve let the hand on her breast come away and ghost down her side, the calluses on his fingers dragging lightly across her smooth flesh. He toyed with the soft ridge of her hipbone for a moment, and Peggy shivered with the sensation made all the more intense by bone so close to the skin. Then he followed the crease of her thigh down and down, stroking his thumb along the surface of her lips before sliding between them.

His thumb teased the entrance of her vagina only briefly, coating itself in the wetness there before slipping forward again toward the burning core of her arousal. His tongue and lips still danced across her areola and swirled around her nipple. It seemed his attentions flowed between the two loci of pleasure: whenever the sensation became almost too intense at her breast, he would ease off there and redouble his efforts on her clitoris, and when she felt nearly overtaken by the heat between her legs, his concentration would rock back to her nipple. He kept her caught between the two for longer than she could guess, and only when he noticed that she was bucking against his hand more than she was arching into his mouth did he withdraw from her breast to kneel between her legs.

As much as Peggy looked forward to what he planned next, she missed the warmth of his body stretched out above hers; perhaps because of the serum, Steve ran a little hotter than average. The room wasn't uncomfortably cool by any means, but the heat radiating from Steve was a pleasant little reminder of him.

The shift in position had brought a short pause to his efforts between her legs, and feeling Steve's tongue slide into the place where his thumb had been moments before sent a shock of pleasure through her. His arms had curled around her thighs, holding her close to him and helping him maintain the proper angle to do his good work. He found the strong, steady rhythm that she had told him worked best for her, and quickly she found herself at the precipice. She hung there for a moment, and then another touch of Steve's tongue sent her hurtling over the edge.

She arched and strained against him as the orgasm seized her, but its gradual ebb left her a boneless rag-doll in the face of the lingering pleasure. Her lassitude did not last long, though; while she felt nothing but purring contentment from her clitoris, a place deeper inside her body ached with an emptiness that demanded to be filled.

Steve looked up at her from his perch between her knees, with an expression poised between adoration and smugness, and a mouth and chin that glistened with the evidence of his efforts. He began to crawl up the length of her body to kiss her, but Peggy had other ideas in mind; when he had moved up far enough that his hands bracketed her waist, she brought her legs up fast and locked them around his body, throwing her hips to one side to send him crashing to the mattress. She knew she wouldn't have been able to manage the move if he'd sincerely resisted, but the amused surprise and anticipation on his face clearly stated that resisting her advances was the last thing on the mind of Steve Rogers.

He got his kiss then, as she leaned over him – long and deep and utterly heedless of the sex smeared across his face, and brimming with the emotion that still hung unspoken between them. Then Peggy's attention shifted to the small table standing beside the bed, and more specifically, the little box in its uppermost drawer.

One fact that Peggy had discovered in the weeks they had traveled with the Doctor was that any conversation touching on personal or private matters became either breezily frank or intensely awkward when the Doctor was involved. The brief exchange in which he had taken Peggy aside and warned her that children conceived by a couple living in the TARDIS would likely end up part Time Lord had been an almost painfully uncomfortable discussion, but it had led to her acquire a pack of rubbers the next time they had visited twentieth-century Earth.

She withdrew one of these from its box in the nightstand and tore open its foil packet. It unrolled easily down the length of Steve's erection, and she knelt over his hips to position herself above him. Slowly she pushed herself down onto him, spreading her knees apart by degrees as she descended and felt him gradually filling her. Her eyes remained locked on Steve's face as his expression grew more unrestrained each time she pressed down against him.

When he was fully inside her, she paused for a moment, adjusting to the slightly stretched feeling and waiting for the last twinges of discomfort to subside. Then she began to move, gripping the bed's headboard to brace against as she pulled up and thrust back down onto Steve. Soon he was moving with her, his hips straining up against her in time with her undulations. His hands wandered across her body, trailing caresses up her legs, along her sides, across her stomach and around to her lower back.

After a minute or two, her movements slowed a little. It felt _good,_ yes, but something wasn't quite working. Once or twice she felt Steve just brush against something inside her that ached for more attention. "Can we shift positions?"

Steve's response was a nod and an exhalation that failed to resolve into words. Peggy was about to move off him to change position, but Steve's hands on her hips arrested the motion. He sat up, one arm around her back holding her close against him, and the other keeping one of her legs wrapped around him, to allow them to move without disengaging. Peggy laid her head against his chest and savored the feeling of his arms around her, lifting her up.

He brought them down onto the bed on their sides, still facing one another; one of Steve's arms still held Peggy pressed close to his body. His other hand entwined with one of hers under the pillow where their heads now rested. He was still inside her, with one of Peggy's knees hitched over his hip to give him access. It was his turn now to control the pace of their exertions, and Peggy followed his lead, rolling her hips in time with his thrusts. This was much better: at this angle, that sensitive spot deep within her was stroked every time Steve pressed into her. Soon she felt the tide beginning to rise inside her again, and snaked her free hand down between them to touch herself. The sensations created by her fingers and Steve's cock amplified each other, and in another moment the dam broke and she was carried away by the flood.

Something in her own orgasm seemed to push Steve to the brink as well. His thrusts sped up for a few seconds, and then he buried his face in her shoulder as he plunged into her a final time, the grip of his arm around her waist tightening as he came. They lay together, unmoving, until their breathing evened out and Peggy's heart felt less like an excited hummingbird. When Steve lifted his head to look at her, his hair was charmingly tousled and his eyes were wide. "I… that was…" Then he gave up and kissed her.

She couldn't help grinning through the kiss. "Yes, it really was." Her free hand moved to twine its fingers through his hair, but she stopped herself, remembering what those fingers were covered with. Steve took advantage of her hesitation to capture the hand in his, kissing it. Somehow their post-coital nudity managed not to undermine the gallantry of the act.

"Not bad for a first time?" he asked with a grin of his own.

Peggy slipped her arm around him. "I'm certainly not about to kick you out of bed." She shifted position to curl up closer against him, and Steve withdrew from inside her. He carefully removed the rubber, knotted it, and tossed it in a slow arc into the wastebasket by the desk. Then his arm came back around her.

They remained that way for a while, dozing contentedly in one another's arms. Eventually Peggy stirred, rousing Steve as she slipped out of his embrace enough to sit up. "I'll be right back," she told him, and went to use the toilet. When she returned, Steve was waiting for her, reclining with one arm propped against the pillows. Peggy gave him an amused half-smile. "Did you think I'd get lost coming back from the loo?"

"It's not that. It's just… I want to remember all of this. Our time together. I don't want to miss anything." He took her hand as she sat beside him on the bed, holding it in his.

She scooted closer to him on the mattress, until she was able to lean back against him. There were so many things they still hadn't said to each other, things she _ought_ to say to Steve… Her glance caught the sketchbook still sitting on the nightstand to his side of the bed. "You never showed me the picture you drew, that first night. May I see it?"

"Um, sure," Steve agreed, a little hesitantly. "It isn't done yet, though. I guess I kinda didn't want to finish it, because…" He trailed off, but it was easy for Peggy to fill in the blanks. _If he finished the drawing, then I would take it with me when we left here. As long as it's not done, he can forget that will ever happen._ Still, he reached for the sketchpad and opened it, paging past a few doodles to show her the drawing.

He had definitely taken more care with this piece than any other Peggy had seen him draw, and it showed. It was a drawing of her, as vividly realized as the image she saw in the mirror each morning, standing at the open door of the TARDIS and gazing down on the planet Earth below. The Peggy in the drawing wore the same dress Steve had found her in when they had met at the Stork Club. A smattering of stars filled in the background behind the time machine.

"It's beautiful." The visual arts had never been one of her gifts; she could produce a roughly scale map, but nothing artistic, and Steve's abilities continued to impress her. "But there's something missing."

Steve peered over her shoulder at the page. "What?"

She turned her head, touching the tip of his nose with her own. "You," she told him. "This is supposed to be a keepsake of you; I'd like you to be in it."

He ducked his head as he took the pad from her, hiding what Peggy suspected was a blush. "Give me a minute," he said, retrieving his pencils from the bedside table, and began to draw himself in where he belonged, beside her.

* * *

"You're going to love this one!" the Doctor announced as Peggy and Steve entered the console room. "You are about to witness the birth of the very first artificial constellation!"

It didn't bother Peggy that this pronouncement made no sense; the Doctor would explain himself given the right prompting – and as expected, Steve paused in mid-stride and asked, "Wait. How can you _make_ a constellation?"

"I'm glad you asked!" The Doctor hopped over to a panel on the main console and tapped some keys to call up an image. "Nebular seeding. You simply find a series of nebulae in the right areas for the image you want to create, plant artificial gravity-generators inside each nebula, and then squish-kaboom, you've got yourself a lovely new custom-designed constellation!"

"What's the shape of this artificial constellation going to be?" Peggy asked.

"Ah," the Doctor replied, holding up one finger, "that's the question, isn't it? The Scientific Ministry of Berossus Prime has been keeping that little detail top-secret until the Grand Implosion, which is scheduled to begin in roughly…" He peered at a readout on the console. "…Five seconds!" With that, he pulled a lever that thrust open the door of the TARDIS.

The three of them crowded into the doorway and out into the street beyond. It was nighttime, and a crowd had assembled in the streets, amid decorations, foodstuffs, and musical instruments (though occasionally it was difficult for Peggy to guess which were what). The scene carried an air of excited anticipation: all eyes in the crowd were turned to the night sky.

"I see something!" Steve exclaimed, pointing. A moment later, Peggy saw it too. As they watched, new stars blossomed in the dark sky, one after another. But as the image became clearer, she felt her brows drawing together in puzzlement. At last, she decided it was her turn to ask the obvious question.

"Why does the constellation say, 'Hello, Sweetie'?"

The Doctor was staring up at the sky, looking stunned. At her question, he turned to look at her, then turned back toward the TARDIS, then turned back around to stare at the sky again, and went on in that vein until he had completed two full revolutions. Then he frowned, and stared at the sky again. "I'm afraid that's for me," he said with chagrin.

"The constellation?" Steve asked.

"It's… well, it's my wife," he explained. "Occasionally she does… _things,_ when she needs to get my attention. I don't ask how she manages it; she's _her._ Anyway, I need to take this call." He started to turn back toward the TARDIS, but stopped short and looked at the two of them. "You're welcome to tag along, if you like. It will probably be terribly dangerous, but that's half the fun of it!"

Peggy looked at Steve, who had turned to meet her eyes. From his downcast look, his thoughts were of a match for her own: _Of course I want to stay – that's the problem. I'll_ always _want to stay, and travel the universe with Steve. The longer we put off going back to our own times, the harder it will be to convince ourselves to return at all. What would it be like after another month of this – or a year?_ Steve reached out and took her hand in his, which she squeezed tightly. Then she tore her gaze away from Steve's, and the pain she saw there. She turned to the Doctor. "I'm afraid that if we don't go back now, we never will. And we must."

The Doctor's expression grew solemn as well. "If that's what you want."

"It's not," Steve replied immediately, "but that's what we have to do."

He nodded, but then turned to fix his gaze on Peggy. "Are you sure about this?"

She knew exactly what he was thinking, but her answer hadn't changed since that first night they had spoken in the TARDIS. "This is the way it has to be," she said simply.

A deep sadness shone in the old man's eyes – for in that moment, Peggy could see that he _was_ an old man. "Very well, then," he sighed. "Let's get you kids home."

* * *

To an untrained observer, she was nothing more than a personal assistant or military clerk standing as part of the Prime Minister's entourage, her bored expression giving her the air of one who has heard the same speech, or others just like it, enough times to recite it from memory. Though her quarry here was anything _but_ an untrained observer, the combination of her calculatedly aloof demeanor and her gender might lead him to make assumptions that she could use to her advantage. Women in military support roles were generally considered part of the scenery at best, and potential liabilities at worst. She was not the only one wearing a military uniform, mixed in among the Specialist Protection officers who guarded Churchill. She had worked closely with these men over the past several days, since she had uncovered intelligence suggesting that this rally was the target of the spy she was tracking.

The orders from MI5 recalling her to London had come on the Monday morning following Peggy's return. Due in part to her firsthand experience with the Hydra infiltrator in Brooklyn during Project Rebirth, she was assigned the task of ferreting out German spies and deep-cover agents at home. A small team of junior agents were working under her supervision, but Peggy preferred to handle the majority of the legwork herself. Her days became a blur of personnel dossiers and clandestine meetings, until she occasionally needed to ask one of those junior agents what day of the week it was.

But if her superiors had concerns that her single-minded focus on her work bordered on obsession, at least they had no cause for complaint over her results: in the past four months she had uncovered and apprehended two Nazi agents, one a German national and the other a British sympathizer, and was closing in on her third. The first two spies had embedded themselves in positions of access and trust, where they could obtain sensitive information to funnel to the other side – but this new prey was different. He'd remained almost painfully inconspicuous since arriving in the UK, so much so that Peggy had only discovered his existence by happenstance during an investigation into a previous lead. The lengths to which he'd gone to remain beneath the notice of British Intelligence told her that his mission was something far more sinister – sabotage or assassination. If the puzzle pieces she'd assembled of his movements over the last three weeks were correct, it appeared that his intent was the latter.

What her investigation had failed to produce was a photograph of the suspected spy, or even a useful description. She had only a few sparse details: male, late thirties, dark hair, medium build – the sort of man who would fit in almost anywhere with the right clothes and a plausible accent. Unless she got very lucky and her prey made a mistake that revealed something suspicious about him, Peggy would have to wait for him to make his move before she could act. So she schooled her expression into a careless mask and let her gaze drift across the assembled attendees, looking for any sign of disruption in the rhythm of the crowd. Her agents were working with the PM's protective detail to cover the entrances and access points, but some uncomfortable instinct told Peggy that the assassin was already inside the building.

Her feigned disinterest in the speech and her surroundings would actually serve her well here; if she had needed to recognize a particular individual, she would need to focus much more clearly on specific faces in the crowd in order to find the man she was after. Without those details, she had to rely on body movements and out-of-place behavior, which was easier to catch at the edges of her vision. So she unfocused her gaze and let her eyes wander across the crowd, exactly as though she were a bored clerical assistant counting the minutes until the end of the event when she could go home and take off these heels.

The dip of a shoulder caught her eye – _a weapon?_ – sending every nerve into high alert. Her gaze flicked to the dark-haired man in the hat, her body tensed for action as he reached into his jacket and... withdrew a handkerchief to wipe his nose. _False alarm._ Her muscles tried to relax again, but the adrenaline coursing through her system fought them.

_There_ – movement in the crowd, like someone trying to push past the assembled onlookers – but a closer look revealed it to be only a young mother chasing after an errant child.

In the end, she almost didn't notice the real assassin; the camera he held and the press pass (probably stolen) in his hat made his movements appear natural within the herd of real reporters. She'd barely spared him a glance as he moved forward to get himself a clear line of sight to Churchill. Between Steve's early brush with media stardom and the time she'd spent over the past few days as part of the Prime Minister's entourage, she had become inured to the way reporters nipped at the heels of the powerful.

In fact, the only reason her attention was drawn to this one photographer at all was that he wasn't aggressive _enough._ He didn't try to elbow his fellows aside or snap a dozen pictures in a matter of seconds. Instead, he glided between the close-packed bodies in the audience and took his photos hesitantly, as if waiting for the perfect shot. When he opened his camera to change the film, Peggy's eyes flicked toward him for just a moment – and she saw him change. The set of his shoulders shifted, and his feet moved into a shooter's stance, bracing against recoil. When his hand emerged from his jacket, it held not a film case, but a pistol.

She had only a few heartbeats to react. Time didn't quite slow, but each moment took on a razor-sharp clarity as she moved. She had two objectives: remove Churchill from the shooter's line of fire, and take down the assassin. _"Gun!"_ she shouted as she ran toward the podium at the edge of the small stage. That achieved the first objective: the PM dove to the ground, and the Specialist Protection officers tackled him, shielding his body with theirs. Before Churchill was even halfway down, she was in position by the podium, where she had the clearest shot through the crowd at the gunman.

Her own sidearm had been in her hand from the moment she had leaped into motion, and she leveled it at the spy, her aim automatic from long practice. Her shouted warning had set the crowd pouring through the exits if they were close enough, or cowering on the floor if they weren't. The removal of human obstacles gave her the perfect shot.

Unfortunately, it had the same effect for the assassin. Just as she squeezed the trigger, she felt a terrible blow to her chest, high on the left side. It felt like she'd taken a blow from a prize-fighter, or been clipped by a speeding car. It unbalanced her, and she fell heavily against the wooden podium before collapsing to the planks of the stage. She landed on her left side, and her shoulder awoke in an explosion of agony. She struggled to move, to take her weight off the source of so much pain, but her left arm was useless. It was only when she glimpsed the blood beginning to soak into the roughly sanded wood beneath her that she realized she'd been shot.

It was the last clear thought she had. The pain was literally blinding now – her vision was fading to gray at the edges, and the noises of the chaos around her faded against the insistent buzzing in her ears.

Someone rolled her over. The pain slackened for an instant, only to return full force when hands pressed heavily on her shoulder. She may have cried out; she knew she tried to push the hands away, but her one functioning arm had no strength in it.

She was dimly aware that she was moving, but she was still lying flat on her back, which made no sense. She couldn't hear most of the voices around her, but there were many of them, talking urgently, sometimes shouting, but without the high note of panic.

A thought penetrated her haze of pain, fuzzy but desperately important; it took her a moment to remember the words that went with it. She opened her eyes – not realizing that she had closed them – and groped weakly for the first person she saw. He was wearing an army uniform, with a red cross on his arm. "…Churchill," she managed, though the word was a struggle.

"The Prime Minister is fine, ma'am. A little shaken up, but not hurt." He spoke loudly and slowly, which she appreciated; it meant she only had to fight a little to understand his words through the pain and worsening dizziness.

"…And the…?" Words were harder now. Fortunately the man, who loomed above and behind her, seemed to understand what she wanted.

"The shooter is dead," he told her. "You got him good, straight through the heart." He smiled down at her; he had a pleasant enough smile, for all that he was upside-down. It looked sad, though. She couldn't see much on either side of it anymore, her vision had narrowed so much, so she just closed her eyes. "It was fine work, ma'am."

There was a bump, which jarred her shoulder horribly, but she had little more than a breathless whimper left in her. Then the movement stopped; she must have gotten to wherever they were taking her, but where that might be wasn't important enough to open her eyes to try and find out. Some time passed that might have been moments or hours, and she heard a sound. It was a strange sound, but she had heard it before… figuring out where was beyond her now, though.

She tried to hold onto whatever threads of awareness she had left, but they were mostly made of pain, and her hands were so weak. Before she faded away completely, she heard another voice, surprisingly clear through the cotton-wool that shrouded her senses. "Don't you worry one bit, Agent Carter. You're in good hands: I'm a Doctor."

* * *

Peggy woke up, much to her own surprise. She had been Church of England since childhood, but rather indifferently for the most part; Christmas and Easter, and little thought given to it the rest of the year. If pressed, she would have admitted that she didn't really believe in an afterlife, as nice an idea as it was. So now either she needed to dramatically re-evaluate her metaphysical expectations about the universe, or she was alive – and she wasn't quite sure which would be the greater shock.

When she opened her eyes, they blearily found their focus on the face of a young woman with dark skin and bright eyes. The woman's hair was pulled up into a bun that fanned out flatteringly behind her head, and the clothing she wore beneath the white laboratory coat was unusual enough that it took Peggy, who was still feeling a bit disoriented, a moment to recognize it: she had seen similar items in the Doctor's "changing room." That decided Peggy that the young woman was not any sort of celestial being, and that Peggy herself was alive somehow. She moved to sit up, until a sharp spike of pain flashed through her chest and shoulder, and the young woman put out a hand to restrain her.

"Please, don't try to get up yet," the woman told her in a gentle tone. "The bullet fractured your collarbone, and there's still some tissue inflammation. You need to take it easy."

Though "taking it easy" wasn't Peggy's usual habit, the burning in her shoulder made her less inclined than usual to argue with the advice. Her mind was slowly clearing, though she seemed able to focus on only one of the questions swirling through her mind at a time. "Who are you?"

The young woman smiled. "My name is Martha Jones. I'm glad you're awake, Agent Carter; with your injuries, I was worried for a while about how much I'd be able to do, even with the help of the TARDIS's medical equipment."

_Medical equipment? Anesthesia, or pain medication maybe..._ That could be why it was such a struggle to think. "You're a nurse?" Peggy guessed.

"A doctor, actually – a _medical_ doctor," Martha clarified, no doubt thinking of the mutual friend they obviously shared. "He came to fetch me three days ago, saying he needed my help. That was a change of pace, I don't mind telling you." She grinned briefly, before her expression turned serious again. "I didn't expect to be performing emergency surgery, though. Fortunately the TARDIS is the best medical assistant a doctor could ask for. I'm not sure how much help I could've been without her."

"Thank you," Peggy replied sincerely. Then she asked the question that she knew Martha had to be anticipating. "How am I?"

"Because of all this," Martha gestured expansively around the room they occupied, which Peggy assumed was the TARDIS's medical bay, "you'll make a complete recovery, and in weeks rather than months. How's the pain? I can give you something, if you like."

She seriously considered the question. The more awake and clear-headed she became, the more aware she was of the throbbing in her shoulder that persisted even when she remained still. But she had dealt with pain before, and didn't relish the thought of descending back into the fog of drugs so soon. Consciousness had been a pleasant surprise, and she found herself reluctant to surrender it again. "In a bit, perhaps," she allowed. "I'd like to chat for a while first, if that's all right with you."

Martha's smile told her that it was – and moreover, that she understood the reason for Peggy's request. "Of course, but you let me know if you need anything, a glass of water or whatever else."

The suggestion made Peggy realize how unpleasantly dry and sticky her mouth was, undoubtedly thanks to the same drugs that had made her feel so groggy. "Some water would be lovely, actually," she replied, and craned her neck to follow Martha's movements without straining her shoulder as the young doctor crouched to reach into a cabinet. "How do you know the Doctor?" she asked, focusing on the only thing she knew they had in common, other than Peggy's injury.

Martha returned to her bedside holding a clear plastic bottle with a drinking straw protruding from the neck. Peggy accepted the water bottle with her good hand and sipped gratefully as Martha replied; the water was ice-cold and almost ambrosial to her cottony tongue.

"We met when a squadron of alien police chased a fugitive into the hospital where I was doing my residency. After that, I traveled with him for a while. It was nice – dangerous and crazy, of course." She glanced down at her hands resting on the edge of Peggy's bed, her smile fond but not quite wistful. "I couldn't stay, though. It wasn't – _he_ wasn't what I needed. He's changed so much since then; I was surprised at how easy it was to come back."

"Changed how?" Normally Peggy wouldn't have continued to sip at her drink while carrying on a conversation, but her body was insistent that she not put down the water.

Martha grinned. "Well, physically, to start with. That was a bit of a shock. The Doctor doesn't... when something happens to him that would kill you or me, instead of dying, he _changes._ That's how he explained it to me. He's the same man, but _different_ at the same time, in more ways than just the face." She shrugged. "For all that this Doctor is different than he was when I traveled with him, I think I understand this one a little better."

The sound Peggy made in response was just this side of unladylike. "I can't imagine what he must have been like before, then; the Doctor I know is a bit... scattered."

"He was _always_ that," Martha agreed, rolling her eyes. "But now he seems... I don't know, more aware of other people? It's hard to explain." She shrugged. "Honestly, after I left the TARDIS the last time, I didn't think I was likely to see him again at all."

Peggy nodded slightly, trying not to pull at her injury. "What have you been doing since then – did you go back to the hospital?"

Martha shook her head. "Even after you walk away from here, it's hard to leave this life behind entirely. I started working with UNIT as a medical officer, and I worked with Torchwood Three for a while."

"Torchwood?" Peggy interjected, wincing as her shoulder protested the way she'd started to sit up again. She lay back down flat, and the pain receded to a tolerable ache. "One of the girls I went to school with ended up working at the Torchwood Institute. She actually tried to recruit me for a while, saying that it was less of an old boys' club than MI5. But I'd earned my position by then, and I wasn't about to give it up."

When Peggy had moved to sit up, Martha had started fussing over her shoulder, but now she pulled up a stool beside Peggy's bed and sat down. "Do you know what division of Torchwood she worked for, or what she did for them?"

A rueful half-smile touched Peggy's lips. "She couldn't talk about the work she did with Torchwood – security and all. I had the same problem with my work for MI5 and the Strategic Scientific Reserve. It made for some rather awkward tea-time conversations when the two of us would get together to catch up on holiday." She chuckled faintly at the memory. "With neither of us able to talk about our work, we mostly ended up discussing the men we weren't seeing, and the children our mothers kept pestering us to have. To listen to us talk, you'd never have guessed how much of the security of the United Kingdom rested on our shoulders."

Martha offered her a knowing grin. "It's hard, having these secrets, knowing about all these amazing things, and not having anyone you can talk about them with – either for security reasons, or because they wouldn't understand. Sometimes it's just... too much to fit in your own head."

Peggy's imagination offered up a sampling of all the terrifying, wonderful, and impossible things she'd experienced since the war began – from the human horrors she'd seen on her covert missions behind enemy lines, to the technological marvels of Dr. Erskine's serum and Hydra's energy weapons, and the magical moment when she opened a door and looked down at Earth from space. "That's very much the way it feels at times," she agreed. "That reminds me; when am I likely to be–"

"I thought I heard someone being awake and talking in here!" the Doctor announced, all but leaping into her view – which was more than usually startling, with her line of vision restricted by her immobility on the medical bed. "How's our favorite patient?"

She exchanged a glance with Martha, then responded. "I've definitely felt better, but as my condition is a decided improvement over any expectations I might have had, I'm hardly in a position to complain. It's actually quite tolerable so long as I don't move too much."

"Well, not to worry about that," the Doctor assured her heartily, "Martha here will have you absolutely ship-shape and Bristol fashion in no time at all!"

"More like a couple of weeks," Martha put in pointedly, but was waved off by the Doctor.

"So – in light of the fact that records of your death were just a teensy bit exaggerated, you've got a decision to make," he plowed on.

Peggy suddenly found herself quite glad that the Doctor had waited a bit to visit her after she'd awoken; the idea of trying to keep up with him while she was still woozy from the medications and protracted unconsciousness made her head spin. "Oh?"

"Of course," he affirmed, clapping his hands and rubbing them together. "There's the question of where you'd like to end up once you've recovered. Returning to your own time is a possibility, though admittedly a somewhat sticky one, since you were very publicly shot and are listed as having been killed in action. On the other hand, there's the whole of time and space out there, waiting for you!" Completing the grandiose gesture that accompanied the phrase, he turned to Peggy, his expression turning more serious. "I can take you anywhere you want to go, any _time_ you want to be there. Just say the word."

She didn't try to sit up this time, despite the realization that made her want to start upright. Instead she settled for staring up at him intently. "That was your plan all along, wasn't it? To go back and save me, so I'd be able to go to his future."

The Doctor's face folded into a sad smile, and for a moment his eyes reflected the truth of his claims to be more than a thousand years old. "Two people who belong together shouldn't be separated by time," he said simply. "I had a hard time accepting that not very long ago. It seems only right that I should help bring you two back to one another – if that's what you want."

Peggy relaxed back into the thin cushion of the medical bed. _I've done my duty to King and Country; there's nothing more history expects of me – and in fact, it might_ change _history if I went back._ She was free now, to do as she wished, to go where she pleased. She raised her eyes to the Doctor's again and returned his smile. "Yes, I do believe that's precisely what I want."

* * *

It had been raining that morning. The grass still shimmered wetly from it, and transparent droplets clung to the letters engraved on the smooth stone before him. Steve reached out to brush away the moisture, and found himself tracing the outline of a single name with his fingertip: Agent Margaret "Peggy" Carter.

As promised, the Doctor had returned him to his SHIELD-furnished apartment only minutes after he'd departed, clad in his dress uniform, for his date. Tony had started making noises about converting some of the floors in Stark Tower into personal suites for the Avengers, but in that moment, Steve had been glad of his privacy. The others would have expected him to be happy when he returned, having gotten to see his girl again. But seeing Peggy again meant saying goodbye to her again, and the first time he'd had the minor distraction of plummeting to his demise. Now he had to live with the loss of her, just like he'd had to live with the loss of his entire world when he'd first woken from the ice… only a couple of months ago, he'd realized, counting the time he'd spent with Peggy in the TARDIS. It was too soon to face being alone all over again. The need to reach out to her, to connect with whatever still remained of Peggy Carter, prompted him to ignore his better judgment: he had to know.

He had been given a login code for the SHIELD computer system – the one that was accessible from the internet, the tech had explained. Copying the name and password sticky-noted to his laptop was simple enough even for a kid from 1940s Brooklyn, and in a few minutes, he'd found what he was after.

Peggy Carter had lived for only four months after they had parted company in the TARDIS; she'd been shot and killed in the line of duty.

He wasn't sure what he'd been hoping to find. It had been almost seventy years since they'd served together – the odds of Peggy living well into her nineties hadn't been great, even with twenty-first century medical technology at her disposal. She might well have died of old age twenty years ago. But if she had, it would've been different. He would be able to imagine that she was still living her life, just in a different time. Now… it was as though she were dead twice over.

Sleep had been impossible. Waiting until morning, he'd ridden to SHIELD headquarters and prowled the corridors for Barton, who was still being subjected to evaluations by half a dozen different departments after his subversion by Loki. He was more than happy to be Steve's accomplice and getaway driver if it meant escaping the building and the endless parade of Rorschach blots presented to him by SHIELD psychiatrists, and no one on hangar duty that morning was prepared to deny Captain America a Quinjet.

Between travel time and the five-hour time difference, they arrived in Surrey in time for an early dinner, which Steve had no interest in acquiring. Barton felt otherwise and promised to meet him back at the plane when Steve was finished.

The Brookwood Memorial was a beautiful and fitting tribute to the war dead whose remains had been unrecoverable; it appealed to both his artist's eye and the memories he carried of serving beside so many brave men and women. Standing in the center of the circular pavilion of white marble, green grass, and gray stone, he was literally surrounded by the dead, whose names were carved on the upright slabs that ringed the monument. But as much as he respected and honored the sacrifices of every soul who had fallen and been remembered here, right now the only name that mattered to him was the one beneath his fingers.

"Peggy," he breathed, then stopped; the words wouldn't come. How could he tell her everything he was feeling, when it was so overwhelming that he could barely make sense of it himself? How could he tell her that she meant so much more to him now than she had even when he was carrying her picture in his compass on every mission, to help keep him pointed in a direction that she would be proud of? _How can I tell her that I need that direction more than ever now, in this crazy future where nothing is familiar and I'm so alone? She'd laugh at me, and say that we've been to crazier and more alien futures than this. And she's right… but things didn't seem so strange when she was there. Everyone here sees me as this living legend that I barely recognize, but with Peggy, I know who I'm supposed to be. Or I_ did…

"Colonel Phillips pushed for my inclusion here, didn't he?" an impossible voice asked from behind him. "The Agency respected our service, but was never much for sentiment."

He almost didn't turn around, afraid that he would find only an empty cemetery, and that the loneliness would crush him. But Steve Rogers had never been especially good at self-preservation.

If she had looked exactly the way he remembered her, he would have thought she was a mirage manufactured by grief. And indeed, the smart uniform, crimson lips, wry smile, and brilliant dark eyes were a perfect match for the Peggy Carter enshrined in his memory. But there was one detail he never would have imagined, if this had been a hallucination meant to ease his longing: the white cloth sling that held her left arm cradled against her chest. Though he'd read over the report from her final assignment a hundred times the previous night, and another twenty on the flight to England, his mind had recoiled from visualizing her final moments; his imagination refused to hurt her. That must mean this Peggy standing before him, alive but wounded, _must_ be real.

He let out a sound that was half her name, half a sob, and rushed forward to embrace her. He pulled up short at the last moment, trying to find a way to put his arms around her without hurting her shoulder. With a little laugh, she closed the distance between them and tugged him close with her good arm. "I missed you terribly, you know," she sighed into his neck.

Steve wanted to take a step back and look at her, but his arms refused to unfold from around her waist. "Oh God, I thought – I thought I'd lost you forever. Again," he muttered into her hair.

"So did I, for a while," she admitted, seemingly in no hurry to disengage from his affections.

"But how? Your service record…"

She pulled back just enough to look up into his eyes. "How do you think? The Doctor…" she glanced over her uninjured shoulder, and he followed her gaze only to see the silhouette of the TARDIS fading slowly out of existence, accompanied by the oddly musical groaning of the time machine's engines. Peggy sniffed. "Not much for goodbyes, is he?"

Steve felt a smile begin to take root on his face, and he gave Peggy a careful squeeze. "Goodbyes are overrated."

"Quite right. Let's do try to have fewer occasions for them in the future."

He grinned, but then glanced up at the Memorial surrounding them. "I still don't understand, though. How did he bring you here when history has you dying in 1944? Not that I'm not happy with the change," he added.

She replied with an artful one-shouldered shrug. "Why do you think my name is on the memorial for soldiers whose bodies weren't recovered, when I was shot on British soil? I'm given to understand that he stole me right out of the ambulance."

"Well, however he managed it, I'm glad you're here. How's your arm?" He grimaced in embarrassment, realizing that probably should have been his first question.

Peggy gave her left shoulder an experimental twitch, and her grimace mirrored his own for a moment. "It's improving," she said finally. "I spent a fortnight healing in the TARDIS before the Doctor brought me here, but I couldn't bear to wait long enough for it to heal completely. But the treatments I had there should allow me to recover in a fraction of the normal time, so I'll be right as rain before you know it."

"That's great!" He found himself smiling again, or possibly still. "But we should probably head back, before they decide to court-martial me for going AWOL."

She laughed. "It would be a tragedy if they reduced your rank. 'Lieutenant America' just doesn't have the same spirit to it."

"Then we'd better get going." He finally took a step away from her and offered her his arm. She slipped her right hand into the crook of his left arm and allowed him to lead the way out of the circle of ghosts.

They entered the Quinjet to find Barton sitting in the pilot's seat with his feet up on the console, eating battered fish and potato wedges out of a faux-newspaper cone. He looked up when he heard footsteps on the deck – and stared. "Um, Cap," he said after swallowing the bite of fish he'd taken a moment before they walked in, "when you said you wanted to come to a cemetery in England to see your girl from the war, I sorta didn't expect that you'd be _bringing her back with you._ I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a pleasure, ma'am," he hurriedly added, dropping his booted feet back onto the deck. He rose from the chair and brushed the grease off his fingers on the leg of his pants before extending the hand to shake.

Steve was grinning like an idiot, and he didn't care. "Peggy, this is Agent Clint Barton of SHIELD."

Peggy shook Barton's hand firmly and smiled. "Agent Peggy Carter of MI5 – well, formerly of MI5 by now, certainly."

Judging by the way his spine straightened, Barton looked like he recognized the name. "An honor to meet you, Agent Carter. If you and Cap want to strap in, I'll have us in the air in no time."

Peggy thanked him, and then she and Steve emerged from the cockpit to find their seats for the flight. Steve helped her maneuver the harness with her one good arm, and before long the Quinjet was in the air, taking them home.

* * *

The uniformed young man sitting behind the desk looked up from the intercom at Steve and nodded. "He'll see you now; go on in." Many of the SHIELD personnel he'd interacted with, including ranking officers, had needed to stifle a bit of starry-eyed enthusiasm at meeting and talking with Captain America, but this twenty-something lieutenant addressed Steve in the same impassive tones that might have greeted any document courier or military attache. Steve had thought that such a reception would come as a relief, but in this case, it felt a little unnerving instead – this kid clearly interacted with _actually_ important people frequently enough to become jaded by celebrity. It drove home the audacity of what Steve was about to do. _No point in second-guessing the drop zone when you've already left the plane,_ he told himself firmly, and walked into Director Fury's office.

The Director was standing behind the desk, which was clear of everything except a thin computer monitor. The room itself was similarly sparse, with floor-to-ceiling windows currently tinted dark to obscure the view. "Good morning, Captain. What can I do for you?"

"Sir," Steve began, taking a moment to collect his thoughts and remind himself of what he planned to say. "You told me when I first woke up in this century that if there was anything I needed to help me adjust, I should let you know. Does that offer still stand?"

He watched Fury's reaction carefully; no one as savvy as the Director of SHIELD would agree to a request like that out of hand, without first knowing what he was promising. Fury's eye narrowed slightly, and there was a short beat before he spoke. "Anything within reason, that the organization can provide or that I can arrange myself, yes. What's on your mind, Captain?" This time the word was more than a term of address: it was a subtle reminder of rank and command.

"Nothing unreasonable," he replied. The office door had swung shut behind him when Steve had entered the room; now he dropped out of parade-rest and crossed the few steps back to the door, opening it. Then he returned to stand in front of Fury's desk, but not alone this time. "Director Fury, this is Agent Margaret Carter, formerly of MI5 and liaison to the Strategic Scientific Reserve. She will be needing housing accommodations, a stipend, and valid identity documents."

"And a position," Peggy added crisply. "You no doubt have access to my service record, and I fully intend to earn that stipend."

Fury didn't respond immediately; he simply studied them both, his expression unreadable. _I guess it's not every day that a British spy from World War Two marches into your office and demands a job, even when you're Nick Fury._

But it didn't take the Director long to reach a decision – Steve supposed one didn't get to be the head of a secret military organization with global reach without being able to think on your feet. "I believe that can be arranged, Agent Carter. In fact, I have a position in mind that I suspect would suit an agent of your talents very well. We can discuss the details later. For now, if you'll head down to Personnel, we can get those ID documents and the stipend taken care of. They'll be informed of what you need by the time you get there." He turned to Steve. "Was there anything else, Captain?" This time, something in Fury's voice on the final word suggested that Fury had more to say, and Steve could expect a visitor later that evening.

"No sir, that's all for now." Steve remained a little suspicious of how smoothly that had gone, and wondered whether the other shoe would drop during his conversation with the Director later, or when Peggy found out what her new assignment was.

"Good. Then get the hell out of my office; I have _real_ work to do." With a nod, Steve obeyed, carefully keeping the smile off his face until they were back in the outer room. The "other shoe" couldn't be too heavy if Fury was willing to go into the grumpy curmudgeon routine.

Still, he held his tongue until he and Peggy were inside the elevator. He had already learned to recognize CCTV cameras, but he also knew that such devices were rarely wired for sound. "That went better than I thought," he observed.

"There's more to it than that," Peggy retorted. "I wonder about this position he considers such a good fit for me."

"I'm guessing you'll find out pretty soon. He'll probably wait until you're all set up in your new place and properly grateful for SHIELD's generosity." He didn't enjoy the cynicism he felt toward the organization he worked with, but the discovery of "Phase Two" was still fresh in his mind. With an effort, he turned his mind to more pleasant matters. "Speaking of that… there's something I wanted to talk to you about."

Peggy quirked her eyebrows up, inviting him to continue, but Steve didn't speak right away. He'd rehearsed this speech in his mind more times than the conversation with Fury, but this one made him much more nervous. "Go on," Peggy finally prompted.

He swallowed against the sudden dryness in his mouth. "First, I completely understand if you want your own place, and privacy and everything. But I was thinking that, now that you're here – for good – maybe we might want to start thinking about… making things official."

A sincere smile broke across Peggy's face, but it wasn't the expression of effusive delight that television programs had caused Steve to associate with women receiving marriage proposals. "To begin with, let me make one thing perfectly clear," she began. "I _do_ intend to stay here for good, and I am _not_ having second thoughts about anything to do with us." She reached out for his hand with her own right one, the hand not in the sling. "But since I _am_ here for good, and we have as much time now as everyone else does, we don't have to rush. We can have the relationship we wished for during the war."

She seemed concerned for his reaction – though he was too nervous to offer much of one yet – and stepped a little closer to him, looking up into his eyes. "I feel like I know the most important things about you, Steve; I know what you care most about, and what kind of man you are when pushed to the limits. But there are so many things about you that I _don't_ know, and I want to – silly, trivial things, and important things, and all the rest. We can take the time to learn those things about one another now. And I think we should, so that when we do take that step, we're ready."

Hearing her say "when" filled him with a warmth that banished his nerves, and he folded her into a careful hug, mindful of her shoulder. "You're right. I'm glad we'll have the chance to do all those things. I would've missed it."

"But let me make one other thing perfectly clear," she told him, twisting just enough that she could look him squarely in the face. "If you haven't proposed again within a year's time, I shall be terribly disappointed."

"We can't have that," he grinned, and leaned down to kiss her. _It'll be six months at most,_ he decided. Then the elevator beeped, and they had just enough time to disengage before the doors slid apart on the level of the Personnel offices. As they stepped out of the elevator, their hands found each other again, and they strode down the corridor with fingers intertwined.


End file.
